Wednesday, 31 March 2010

During his planned visit to the UK later this year, Pope Benedict XVI plans to take the opportunity to ordain a recent Catholic convert who is quickly rising to prominence within the Catholic Community.

Fr Paul Francis Gadd only decided to start training to be a priest shortly after his return to the UK in August 2008 following his controversial missionary work in Vietnam.

Fr. Gadd sees the Catholic Church as the ideal vehicle in which to fulfil his calling. “I am especially looking forward to working with the younger members of the community” Fr Gadd told Science, Reason and Critical Thinking, “and I am sure that with my influence I can help them to feel touched by the almighty hand”.

A spokesperson for the Vatican said that Fr. Gadd will be a positive boost to his assigned diocese and once ordained by Pope Benedict XVI later this year will immediately take up his position as leader of the gang.

Prof. Tufnel: The LHS goes to 99.9999991% of the speed of light. Look, right across the board, 3.5 TeV, 3.5 TeV, 3.5 Tev and...

Prof. Cox: Oh, I see. And most particle accelerators go up to 99.995% of the speed of light?

Prof. Tufnel: Exactly.

Prof. Cox: Does that mean it's faster? Is it any faster?

Prof. Tufnel: Well, it's 0.0049991% faster, isn't it? It's not 99.995%. You see, most particle accelerators, you know, will be firing particles at 99.995% of the speed of light. You're on 99.995% here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on 99.995 on your accelerator. Where can you go from there? Where?

Prof. Cox: I don't know.

Prof. Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Prof. Cox: Put it up to 99.9999991% of the speed of light.

Prof. Tufnel: 99.9999991%. Exactly. 0.0049991% faster.

Prof. Cox: Why don't you just make it accelerate the particles to the speed of light?

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

The next Winchester SitPhas been put back a week and will now be held on Thursday 1st April 2010, when we are very pleased to have Deborah Hyde talking about Cultural & Physiological aspects of the religious and superstitious experience. Answering questions like:

When do the dead chew in their graves?Why do vampires strike in autumn?Why do ghosts live in electric clocks?

Deborah Hyde who has been writing about the folklore of the macabre for eighteen years. Her book, ‘Unnatural Predators’ will be published this year. She blogs on belief in the supernatural as ‘Jourdemayne’, but often suffers from mission creep. Her daytime, grown-up job is a makeup effects coordinator in the film industry – more vampires and zombies, then.

Wednesday, 10 March 2010

The following logic diagram should help skeptics to easily recognise a logical fallacy coming from a bollocks argument:Visit here for further definitions of the common logical fallacies shown in this diagram.

Following a recent disconcerting trend in unfounded vaccination scares, a significant number of right wing conservative parents in the Unites States have opted for their children not to receive the controversial religion vaccine.

The religion vaccine equips the body’s immune system with the logic and reason required to fight off infection from religious viruses. In addition to established forms of the virus, mutant varieties are constantly evolving, fortunately their construct contains little variation meaning that the religion vaccine remains effective against all currently known strains of religion.

However due to widespread misinformation more and more parents are opting not to give their children the religious vaccine. As a result, herd immunity to religion has now been lost in many American States, meaning that children too young to receive the religion vaccine are now susceptible to virulent religious viruses such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

As outbreaks of religion become widespread, many parents are actually taking their children to religious parties or Sunday Schools, under the misapprehension that they are better off catching the milder form of the virus that attacks children. Many parents believe that it may be better for their children to catch their own preferred religious virus whilst they are young as they will then be immune in later life from other religious viruses that they consider more harmful.

The religion vaccine was first developed in Britain on 24th November 1859 and has gone through many subsequent revisions. The vaccination has ensured that extreme religious pandemics such as those seen during the Crusades and the Inquisition have largely been kept at bay in the enlightened world.

However many scientists now fear that the falling uptake in the religion vaccine may cause a worldwide religious pandemic.

A spokesperson for the ARV (Anti Religious Vaccine) campaign said,

“I just don’t trust what they put in them vaccines, I’ve heard they contain high levels of concentrated science and reason, I mean it’s just not natural, I don’t want that shit in my kids brains”.

Monday, 8 March 2010

In 2002, a crack scientific unit got pissed off with the constant stream of superstitious and pseudo-scientific beliefs. These men promptly produced books, magazines, podcasts, blogs and TV shows. Today, still unheeded by the believers, they survive as skeptics of fortune. If you have some woo, if no one else can help uncover a rational explanation, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The S-Team.

The previous post on this blog featured a poorly illustrated parody of a much loved children’s book.

With the use of badly constructed rhyme and no sense whatsoever of meter, the author attempted to ridicule some of the Catholic beliefs by highlighting his perceived sense of inherent harm in the current Pontiff’s policies as well as pointing out the immoral inhumanity in its past conduct, for which it remains largely unrepentant.

Thanks to the power of modern social networking software, the post was seeded around the internet and brought to the attention of many people culminating in it eventually being posted on the facebook page of the Pope himself.

The Pope was reported to be “disappointed” with the quality of the illustrations and remarked that as a fan of the original book, he was “saddened that the essence of the original graphic style was so weakly reproduced.” However, the Pope was able to see through the low quality illustrations and rhymes and consider the central message within the piece.

Following a period of quiet contemplation over the weekend to review the points made by the piece, the Vatican has finally released this official press statement penned by the Pontiff himself:

Having recently read a parody piece of satire on the Science, Reason and Critical Thinking blog regarding my planned UK visit later this year, a number of points have been brought to my attention which has caused me to revaluate my stance on a number of issues. After much consideration I thought to myself, Hang on Benny, what the fuck were you thinking, this God malarkey doesn’t really add up does it. I mean really, a big fricking sky fairy looking down on us and interfering with stuff, it’s a bit silly really isn’t. I don’t know how I fell for it in the first place.

Following the press statement further investigations have revealed that a significant number of clergy across denominations and faiths had already cottoned on to the fact that they had been duped, but had opted to keep quiet about it in order to retain their careers and comfortable lifestyles in which they have become fully invested.

Although the Pope's sudden realisation that he’d made a bit of a booboo has finally made the news, suspicion really should have been raised during JP2's Papacy when as far back as 1978, during his US tour, Fr Rotten ended his sermon by addressing the following question to the congregation “Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?”

The Pope is currently considering his post faith options, however many pundits are speculating that he may have a lucrative career as an after dinner speaker for major events musing on his past strange beliefs.

Many thanks to Neil Davies who snapped the stunning photograph above of the Pope at the Vatican this weekend.